Turkey’s foreign policy is emphatically not undergoing a reorientation from the democratic West to Eurasian and Middle East states, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a Washington meeting yesterday. Nor is the country becoming more authoritarian, as some observers suggest.
Reports of attacks on press freedom were overstated, he told a forum held by the German Marshall Fund, insisting that a recent tax demand on a holding company owned by a leading critic of the ruling AK Party was an entirely non-political matter. The government slapped a huge tax fine on the company after its media outlets began an investigation into AKP corruption.
But the premier did little to diminish a reputation for irascible authoritarianism when he said with respect to media freedom that while he welcomed criticism, he would “not tolerate insult.”
Erdogan has been “an impressive leader, producing a livelier and more dynamic Turkey,” write Henri Barkey and Morton Abramowitz, a former board member of the National Endowment for Democracy. The fear that Turkey is “parting with the West for the Muslim world or Putin’s Russia is inflated and misguided,” they argue, while expressing reservations about the drift of domestic politics:
While progressing, now much more slowly, on a democratic-reform package, Erdogan has created the impression that he brooks no dissent. Indeed he cannot tolerate much criticism, and he is using the tax authorities to subdue an opposition press baron. However odious the behavior of Turkey’s media elites has been, he is misusing his powers.
Erdogan has “doggedly defended” the Iranian elections as democratic, embraced indicted war criminal President Bashir of Sudan, and sided with Hamas against both the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority.
The AK party government has been accused of pursuing an ideologically-driven a la carte foreign policy. While ostensibly pursuing leadership of the Islamic world, the AKP has been conspicuously silent on Muslims’ suffering in the northern Caucasus while collaborating with the Kremlin in promoting the South Stream pipeline at the expense of the Nabucco project that would connect Azerbaijan to the West.
The AKP’s foreign policy is shaped by “econo-Islamism,” a blending Turkish business interests with a religio-political world view, writes Soner Cagaptay, director of The Washington Institute’s Turkish Research Program. Turkey’s rapprochement with Russia, Sudan Iran, and Hamas, he writes, had been considered neo-Ottomanist – a “secular” attempt to project Turkish power within the realm of its former empire.
But opinions shifted when the AKP objected to Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s appointment as NATO’s secretary-general, citing the former Danish Prime Minister handling of the “cartoon crisis” as offensive to Muslims. Cagaptay cites a former US ambassador to Turkey: “The Rasmussen and cartoon incidents are telling: The AKP sees itself as the tribune of the politically-defined and -charged Muslim world to the West, and not as an emissary of the West to the Muslims.”
The rise of authoritarian democracy and orthopraxy [religious correctness] under AKP rule shows that even when democratically elected, “Islamists are driven by their illiberal and majoritarian instincts, subverting democracy and transforming societies,” Cagaptay argues:
The AKP has shifted Turkish foreign policy away from the West, helped catalyze a transformation of the Turkish identity towards Islamist causes, and is busy imposing an illiberal view of society, defined by orthopraxy as well as a disregard for check and balances, such as media freedoms. ……….Additionally, the AKP experience demonstrates that when Islamist parties moderate, it reflects not a strategic change but a tactical response to strong domestic and foreign opposition.
Erdogan’s trip to Washington this week was partly designed to counter such portrayals and he insisted that Turkey was striving to serve as a bridge between North and South, East and West. Turkey’s foreign policy was “multi-dimension and multi-axial”, retaining its orientation to the democratic West while “fitting into its natural habitat” and taking advantage of its geo-strategic position.
Turkey also finds defenders amongst the Middle East’s reformers and dissident voices. It is the only country in the region with “both a democratic domestic system and an activist foreign policy,” writes Rami Khouri. “It is refreshing to witness this phenomenon in contrast with the largely passive and often dysfunctional countries across the region.”
He attributes Turkey’s success to three critical elements: freedom of speech and association; civilian authority over the armed forces and security services; and “pragmatic, humble realism in coming to terms with the realities of a pluralistic society.”
References to neo-Ottoman foreign policy are a misrepresentation, argues Suat K?n?kl?o?lu the AK Party deputy chairman for external affairs. The party is pursuing a Janus-like policy, looking both east and west, and correcting the anomalous polarizations of the Cold War.
Speaking at Washington’s Johns Hopkins University this week, Premier Erdogan also rejected the neo-Ottoman characterization as a “misrepresentation” and as “an attempt to cast a shadow” over the AKP government.
Yet the AK government’s Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davuto?lu, is widely considered the leading architect of Turkish foreign policy. As Joshua Walker recently explained, his influential 2001 book, Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position, contends that a nation’s geo-strategic location and historical traditions determine its role and influence in world politics.
The cultural legacy and shared history of the countries of the former Ottoman Empire give Turkey the potential to become a “Muslim super power”, enhancing its geo-strategically pivotal position at the heart of the arc of instability spreading from the Middle East to the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The latest EU progress report suggests that Turkey has lost much of its democratic momentum. Its democracy is currently stagnating due to a combination of domestic and external factors, writes Senem Ayd?n Düzgit of Istanbul’s Bilgi University:
The main political parties at large; the growing Islamic-secular divide that inhibits democratic development, the growing appeal of nationalism, the state of civic-military relations and the state of the Turkish economy currently weakens the prospects for democratic consolidation. On the external side, the EU is increasingly losing its power as the main external anchor of Turkish democratic reform, due to a weakening policy of conditionality and the resulting loss of confidence in the EU.
This toxic blend has the potential, she fears, to restore the political upheaval of the 1990s: “an era lost to political and economic instability, rife with Islamism and Kurdish secessionism.”
So it is imperative that Turkey continues to pursue the political reforms and meet the Copenhagen criteria required for EU membership, writes ?evket Pamuk, professor of contemporary Turkish studies at the London School of Economics:
But it also needs and deserves the same support and the level playing field given to previous candidates. …European support played a key role in the accession not only of central and eastern Europe but also the successful transition of southern European countries to democracy. To withdraw that support from Turkey now would hurt not only its political transformation but also European credibility around the world.
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